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# Account Types

#

GnuCash supports a number of different account types. Always choose the type that is appropriate for what you want to record. If you're not sure, the following explanations should help you decide.

Cash

  The cash account type is used to denote the cash that you store in your wallet, shoebox, piggybank, or mattress.

Bank

  The Bank account type denotes savings or checking accounts held at a bank or other financial institution. Some of these accounts may bear interest. This is also the appropriate account type for check (debit) cards, which directly withdraw payments from a checking account.

Credit Card

  The Credit Cardaccount type is used to denote credit card accounts, both for cards that allow floating lines of credit (e.g. VISA, MasterCard, or Discover) and with cards that do not permit continuing balances (e.g. American Express)

Asset, Liability

  Asset and Liability accounts are used for tracking things that are of value, but that are not directly translatable into cash. For instance, you might collect the costs of purchasing a house into an asset account entitled My House, or the cost of a car into My Car, or collect together the value of your Computer Equipment. The home mortgage or car loan would be represented by liability accounts, Home Mortgage and Car Loan, to be drawn down as payments are made on these loans.

  If you hold assets for business purposes, their decline in value over time might be treated as a deduction for tax purposes, that deduction being called Depreciation. On the other hand, if you own assets that appreciate in value over time, such as real estate, collectibles like paintings, and investments like shares in companies, you may see them appreciate in value, and have to recognize, for tax purposes, what are called Capital Gains.

Stock, Mutual Fund

  Securities that you invest in are a form of asset that are normally acquired with the express purpose of receiving income either in the form of dividends, interest, or Capital Gains. There are securities markets around the world, and widely traded securities with fairly concrete values may be analyzed on a day-to-day basis.

  Stock and Mutual Fund accounts are typically tracked in registers having three main columns:

  - Price

  - Number of shares

  - Cost

  In order to get useful information out of the register, it is necessary to have multiple "views" on the data so that you may assess such things as:

  - Total Values by security

  - Gains/Losses by security

  - Return On Investment rates by security

  More details may be found in the price editor and price sourcessections.

Income, Expense

  Income and Expense account types are used to record income and expenses. For example, if you deposit a paycheck in your bank account, you should mark it as a transfer from an 'income' account. Marking income in this way helps balance the books: the change in your net worth in the course of a few weeks, a few months, or a year, should exactly equal your income (minus expenses) for the same period. The value stored in the bank account contributes to your 'net worth', whereas the income contributes to your 'profits'.

Equity

  Equity accounts are used to store the opening balances when you first start using GnuCash (or start a new accounting period). Assuming that you've had a bank account far longer than you've been using GnuCash, and assuming you don't want to type in old transactions, you will want to type in a non-zero opening balance into your bank account. This opening balance should be marked as a transfer from an account of type 'equity'. Alternately, if you close and reopen all your books at the end of every quarter/year, the 'equity' will be your net-worth at the begining of the period: it equal all assets minus all liabilities. As time passes, you will have income and expenses. At the end of the year, your net worth will be the equity at the begining of the year, plus all income minus all expense. This value then becomes the equity for the next accounting period.

Currency

  Currency Accounts are used for trading currencies. In most ways, they behave like stocks, except that the only way that "income" may be gotten from them is from fluctuations in the relative values of currencies. Note that transfers cannot be made directly between two accounts denominated in different currencies. Such transfers may only be made into currency trading accounts.

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